War Thunder: Ground Forces Closed Beta Gameplay Footage Released

War Thunder is already a very highly praised MMO flight simulator. Gamers have a grand number of aerial vehicles to choose from and blast the crap out of each other with. Well, joining those aerial monsters are ground forces... tanks. New video has emerged of the tanks in action from the recent closed beta.

DSO Gaming spotted a 12 minute gameplay preview from YouTube user SovereignZuul, where he goes around blasting the ever-living-crap out of his opponents as if he were spit-shooting into a pot.

There is a heck of a lot of detail that has gone into the ground forces portion of War Thunder. I'm not an avid player of the game but the dog-fighting between planes is handled exceptionally well. On the realistic settings there are a lot of things to account for that can make or break your victory. The same applies for the tanks.

It's not just that you're dealing with realistic speeds, engine maintenance and ammo account for the artillery, there are also terrain factors to consider as well. You see in one segment early in the video where an opponent mistakenly tries using a cliff-face as a sort of tank sniping spot, but the treads lose their grip and the tank takes a nasty spill over the cliff's side where it falls perfectly in line to get blasted by enemy forces. Being aware of every aspect of your surroundings is kind of key.

I'm also totally digging the small aesthetic details to the way the tanks maneuver and handle – the small billowing puffs of smoke emanating from the diesel engine to the way the branches creak and break under the weight of the multi-ton war machine as it plows through forested areas – it's all done with exceptional detail that you would usually expect from an AAA title.

One of the things I'm most curious about, however, is the upcoming naval combat segments. While tanks are nice and help flesh out the overall scope of a battle, they aren't particularly my cup of tea. Now naval combat? That's the real deal right there.

War Thunder will supposedly allow players control of the seafaring boats that helped shape the battle-scape of the war and hew victory and defeat for various forces.

It would be pretty awesome commanding a destroyer class vessel or manning a gunship to take down aerial forces or provide artillery support for ground forces. Yes, I'm totally excited for that kind of content.

In the meantime, we'll just have to settle for tanks and planes, but it's cool that there are more vehicles planned for release for the game. You can hop onto War Thunder right now for the price of a few gigabytes and some of your monthly bandwidth cap.